Deloitte Insights Video

Many industries today are moving in one of two directions: They’re either splintering into ecosystems made up of many small, niche players or consolidating around just a few large corporations, according to John Hagel and John Seely Brown, co-chairs of Deloitte LLP’s Center for the Edge. This dynamic is dramatically changing the way companies operate and compete, and large organizations in particular will have to adjust their growth strategies as a result.

Traditional office-centric and campus working models support collaboration and creativity, but offer little employee flexibility. Conversely, virtual models offer flexibility and other benefits, but can erode company culture. This Deloitte University Press video examines the potential and viability of a hybrid working model that encompasses the strengths of each.

Young consumers weaned on 24/7 connectivity and convenience have very different expectations of automobile technology and ownership, according to findings from Deloitte’s 2014 Global Automotive Consumer Study. These and other generational shifts in consumer opinion are challenging automotive companies to engage potential customers in new ways.

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As security improvements, consumer acceptance, and business interest converge, mobile payments will likely begin a steady climb in 2015, according to Deloitte Global. To capitalize on this growth, CIOs of merchant companies may need to upgrade their point-of-sale systems and take other measures to facilitate acceptance of mobile payments.

For the first time, smartphone upgrade purchases within a single year will surpass the 1 billion mark in 2015, according to new research from Deloitte. It’s a testament to the powerful hold that advanced smartphone technology and ease of use have on consumer markets and across the business spectrum.

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Deloitte Insights for CIOs couples broad business insights with deep technical knowledge to help executives drive business and technology strategy, support business transformation, and enhance growth and productivity. Through fact-based research, technology perspectives and analyses, case studies and more, Deloitte Insights for CIOs informs the essential conversations in global, technology-led organizations.

Deloitte CIO Larry Quinlan on Mobile Technology

On a recent family vacation, my daughters and I rented jet skis. The entire rental process was executed using mobile technology. The operator scheduled our equipment, swiped my credit card, and even issued a receipt from his mobile phone. He uses his mobile phone to arrange for maintenance, too. This is just one example that “mobile only” is a lasting trend that’s changing all manner of personal and professional interactions.

At Deloitte, we have a five-pronged approach for taking advantage of mobile. The first prong is hardware: You can’t be mobile without devices. Companies take various approaches to provisioning, from “everyone will get the same device, and they’re going to like it” to “bring your own device, whatever it is, secure or unsecure.” We opted for a compromise. Once a mobile device passes our security testing, we offer it as an option to employees.

The second prong is device management. While we haven’t adopted a single, heavy mobile device management application, we manage devices carefully. We closely track them on the network. We ensure compliance with necessary updates and patches, and we tightly link each device to its owner and track hardware and usage costs.

The third prong is our software. How do we feel about tablet, PDA, and multiplatform software? We experiment to answer those questions. Many amazing apps exist, but at Deloitte, we have to choose those that support business imperatives. We have an enterprise app store, and we’re now globalizing it to unify our software experience.

The fourth prong is collaboration. We fundamentally believe that mobile improves collaboration. We use a web conferencing solution that allows us to join web conferences from our tablets and smartphones in addition to our laptops. Mobile web conferencing helps us keep pace with our teams and clients, even when we’re on the go.

The last prong is handling the unknown answer to the question, “What’s next?” Can we radically improve a business process, like the jet ski operator working in a way that he couldn’t before? Will mobile help us deploy our people? Manage skill sets? Write proposals? Maybe it’s not revolutionary, but what if we could use mobile to manage office space? Monday through Thursday, when our client-facing professionals tend to work offsite, our offices are virtually empty, yet on Friday you can’t find a seat. What if our badges acted as real-time sensors to improve management of our space, and ultimately saved tens of millions of dollars on real estate costs?

How do we measure our achievement? We’re in the people business, so productivity improvements provide us with a competitive advantage. Consider this: If you find 89 emails in your inbox after a transatlantic flight, you can probably clear most of them by the time you get through customs. Before mobile, however, those messages would have had to wait until you reached your hotel. It’s hard to argue that mobile doesn’t improve productivity.

Many CIOs like to be in control, and I am no different. But with mobile, my advice is do not try to control it completely. Consider an experimental approach to developing apps. Listen to your people to improve your understanding of how they use mobile. Build prototypes, get feedback, and throw them away. This experimental mode of working is hard to embrace, since nobody has ever said, “Let’s implement an ERP system, see what it does for us, and scrap it next year.” But mobile necessitates a different approach.

Ultimately, CIOs achieve success when technology supports the way people inherently do their jobs. We need to figure out how to tie mobile to fundamental business processes. When we finally affect business processes with mobile in a way that makes people say, “Wow, I never thought of that!”…we’ve done our job.